1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a nail print apparatus and a printing method thereof.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, there have been known nail print apparatuses which print desired nail designs on fingernails of people.
By using such apparatus, nail print can be enjoyed easily without visiting nail salons and such like.
As such nail print apparatus, a print apparatus which fixes a finger of a nail to be printed and performs printing by using a pad for transferring ink is described in Japanese Patent Application Laid Open Publication No. 2004-216872, for example.
However, when nail printing is performed on the nail, fine printing cannot be performed unless the height of the nail and the height of a print head have a predetermined positional relationship therebetween and the distance between the nail and the print head is a value suitable for the printing. However, the thickness of a finger, the width of a nail and the degree of curvature of a nail vary according to individual and the type of finger.
Thus, in order to perform fine printing, the finger conventionally needs to be adjusted to the height suitable for printing and fixed by using a jig or such like. This is a troublesome work.
Furthermore, when recognizing the position and shape of a nail to be printed for confirming a print range, the nail is photographed with a camera from above to obtain a nail image. However, in such method, an error occurs in the form recognition when the distance between the camera and the nail varies.
That is, when the camera is relatively close to the nail, the nail is recognized as larger than its actual size and the print range may be out of the nail.
On the other hand, when the camera is relatively away from the nail, the nail is recognized as smaller than its actual size and there may be uncoated area.
Thus, there is considered a method such as sensing of information in the height direction and feeding back the information to a mechanism which recognizes the nail shape and such like.
However, such method needs a sensing mechanism which senses information in the height direction. Thus, the apparatus becomes larger, leading to the rise of apparatus cost.